Problem-solving skills are fundamental to our learners becoming independent in their learning and to them developing mastery in Functional ICT, English and mathematics. In order to develop approaches to teaching problem solving we need to identify how we go about solving a problem, what skills are involved in problem solving and what the barriers our learners face when problem solving are.
The table below contains three key questions. Add your thoughts so we can develop a vision of what we have to do to make our learners problem solvers.
How do you go about solving a problem? What are the stages? What are the processes?
What skills are involved in problem solving?
What are the barriers our learners face when problem-solving?
I usually think a lot first and then throw a bunch of ideas at it and then realise it hasn't worked and try something else until something halfwaydecent gets done.
Then I try and decide if that'll do enough of a job (in which case I drink coffee and eat cake) or whether it needs improving. The if loop continues until I'm sat drinking coffee.
Go for a walk.
I think.
A bunch: categorisation, synthesis of information, imagination, reflection, communication and probably a bunch of other stuff.
Some of them strike me as soft skills and some as really hard skills.
There are, of course, specific skills which might be applicable to particular problems (like being able to change a fuse for example...), but in general if you looked at the sorts of skills used in decision making work in subjects like geography and started to apply the same principles elsewhere I reckon it'd be a good start.
It depends how creative the problem is. Creative problems usually involve wandering around in the fog for an indefinite period until the fog clears and the half-seen things join up and make sense
A lack of understanding of the processes and skills - the whole metacognition thing.
If we can show them what they're doing in their head than I think we can improve their access to tasks. The trouble is that we don't ever focus enough on what they're doing in their head - and the joined up nature of that isn't often capitalised on as well as it really should be.
*Perhaps* the time freed up in curriculums with all that KS3 stuff going might get used. *Perhaps* flexible curriculum design might help - getting rid of artificial subject boundaries in early KS3 and KS2. But perhaps people'll just start teaching GCSE a bit earlier instead rather than looking for opportunities to wean them off spoon feeding </rant>
Time to wander around in the fog and the support for doing so...
Problem-Solving
Problem-solving skills are fundamental to our learners becoming independent in their learning and to them developing mastery in Functional ICT, English and mathematics. In order to develop approaches to teaching problem solving we need to identify how we go about solving a problem, what skills are involved in problem solving and what the barriers our learners face when problem solving are.
The table below contains three key questions. Add your thoughts so we can develop a vision of what we have to do to make our learners problem solvers.
Then I try and decide if that'll do enough of a job (in which case I drink coffee and eat cake) or whether it needs improving. The if loop continues until I'm sat drinking coffee.
Go for a walk.
I think.
Some of them strike me as soft skills and some as really hard skills.
There are, of course, specific skills which might be applicable to particular problems (like being able to change a fuse for example...), but in general if you looked at the sorts of skills used in decision making work in subjects like geography and started to apply the same principles elsewhere I reckon it'd be a good start.
It depends how creative the problem is. Creative problems usually involve wandering around in the fog for an indefinite period until the fog clears and the half-seen things join up and make sense
If we can show them what they're doing in their head than I think we can improve their access to tasks. The trouble is that we don't ever focus enough on what they're doing in their head - and the joined up nature of that isn't often capitalised on as well as it really should be.
*Perhaps* the time freed up in curriculums with all that KS3 stuff going might get used. *Perhaps* flexible curriculum design might help - getting rid of artificial subject boundaries in early KS3 and KS2. But perhaps people'll just start teaching GCSE a bit earlier instead rather than looking for opportunities to wean them off spoon feeding </rant>
Time to wander around in the fog and the support for doing so...